


Ten Days

by ladyflowdi



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode: s02e14 Grace Under Pressure, Gen, Hallucinations, Illnesses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-10
Updated: 2005-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:02:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney finds himself in an Atlantis that’s been completely deserted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Days

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by spoilers for Grace Under Pressure. Part of my LJ-to-AO3 project.

When Rodney woke up, there was no bedside vigil. 

He hated the infirmary, not just because of the heart monitors and the antiseptic smell, and not because he’d watched his father die in a hospital bed just like the one he was lying on. Every time he woke up in the infirmary, it was as if he were a lone body in space, with nothing but alien equipment all around him, aches and pains in places where there shouldn’t have been, and the most intense sensation of vertigo he’d ever felt before coming to Atlantis.

He hated the infirmary because being in the infirmary meant that others felt an obligation to come see him when he was holed up there with whatever various injury he’d managed to obtain during that week’s mission. Rodney was not a people-person. Give him science any day of the week, any time of the day, any hour or minute or second, but _keep_ the people. All they ever managed to do was irritate him.

Which had nothing to do with blowing up three-fifths of a solar system, alienating the only friends he’s ever truly had, and making a public mockery of himself, of course.

“Carson?”

Nothing. Not so much as a flutter of sound.

He called out, again and again, and almost instantly it was Twilight Zone and Outer Limits and X-Files. Rodney had seen this episode already, where the guy wakes up in a hospital to find the entire city of Vancouver cum Insert American City had been completely abandoned without his ever being the wiser. Rodney _hated_ those episodes, because the Mulderesk guy always ended up uncovering some huge plot for world domination because he was tall and handsome and good looking. The short, chubby guy always ended up as dinner for whatever beast happened to have eaten the entire population and wanted seconds.

He didn’t panic. Rodney McKay may have been many things, most of which were downright unsavory, but he wasn’t some high maintenance drama queen who cracked at the merest hint of trouble. 

He wasn’t _Kavanagh_ , for Christ’s sake.

So, being the intelligent, scientific type and armed with nothing but one of Carson’s enormous needles he kept in a box in the back of his supply closet so as to not scare the living hell out of his prisoners, Rodney unplugged and unhooked himself from all his wires, leaving only the ones that hurt like a bitch when he tugged on them. His toes curled on the freezing floor, and he left blood like bread crumbs all the way to the control room.

He was hoarse by the time he knew for a fact that he was alone.

\-----

The first day, Rodney did everything he could not to panic, because Samantha Carter had done this and he would lay his bets that _she_ hadn’t panicked. Granted, he was sure she had her clothes and her short term memory intact, and probably looked drop dead gorgeous even bleeding from the head because she was resourceful _and_ sexy. Rodney looked like what he was – a man approaching middle age with a widow’s peak, bruises under his eyes, and no recollection of how everyone managed to _forget him_ during the mass exodus from Atlantis. 

So, he tried not to panic and put together a plan, because even without his short term memory he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was absolutely _brilliant_ and _Canadian_ and _resourceful_. 

And brilliant, resourceful Canadians didn't jump at small noises.

\-----

The second day, Rodney took every computer in the control room apart.

It was about ten seconds after he went to check on the ZedPM that he realized everything they’d brought from Earth was gone. Lab equipment, tools, coffee makers, clothes, blankets. The mess looked like a ghost town, the Ancient freezers empty but for Bob McFrosty, the Genii they’d found frozen solid behind a shipment of inedible Mystery Meat from PS2-151 three months after the storm. Rodney looked at Bob dispassionately for a moment, considered cannibalism for a good twenty seconds, and discounted him as a veritable food source being that even _Rodney_ wouldn’t stoop so low as to barbecue a Genii. He looked tough and gamey, anyway.

The rest of Atlantis was as deserted as the mess hall, save for his bedroom, where he found his tool kit. 

He ignored the dust covers over everything, and went back to the Stargate.

\-----

The third day, Rodney started seeing things.

The only rational explanation he’d come up with was that time had lapsed, because he knew for a fact that he wouldn’t have been left in Atlantis without a damn good reason. He couldn’t remember anything before waking up in the infirmary, but he had strange welts over his arms and chest and face. They were hot to the touch, like hives after an allergic reaction, but damned if Rodney could remember what he could have eaten to give him hives. They didn’t itch, persay, but it hurt like hell to lean against them for too long a time.

He tried not to think about it and instead, worked to get the Stargate back online for fourteen straight hours. 

By the time he conceded defeat all he had to show for it were bloodied fingers and a trembling fever that made him ache to his bones.

Elizabeth looked at him gently from behind his console and said, “I’m doing everything I can to help you,” and Rodney was sure he’d been alone ten minutes ago, and he’d _tried_ damn it, but he thought he’d earned himself a little freak out, and indulged with gusto.

“Yes, well, let’s remember for a moment that I’m the one with multiple PhD’s and you’re not real, shall we?”

A small, sad smile curved her lips. “I’m doing everything I can, Rodney.”

Rodney closed his eyes and had his panic attack. When he woke up, he was alone.

\-----

The fourth day, Rodney started hearing voices.

He felt ashamed that it took him so little time to completely lose his mind, because Carter was on the _Prometheus_ for _days_ before she started hearing things, and she’d had a _head wound_ , for pity’s sake. Then again she’d had plenty of food, and Rodney thought he’d never been so hungry in his entire life. Not hungry enough to eat grilled Genii, though. Not yet.

He was weak and dizzy, and the last thing he needed was a fucking hypoglycemic reaction, so rather than entertain thoughts of Genii feast, he went looking for something to eat. There were no power bars to speak of, no grains or fruits, no MREs, no supplies whatsoever in their normally well-stocked pantries and supply closets. The only thing even remotely resembling edible food stuffs were the odd green plants the Botany team had planted in one of the green houses on the pier closest to their labs, so Rodney went out there, hospital gown and all, to pick some. 

They tasted over-ripe and salty on his tongue when he indulged and ate a few of the ones he was picking, like pork rinds that had passed their expiration date, or under-cooked bacon. Without a doubt, he was absolutely certain that if this was all he could find to eat for the rest of the time it took him to _die_ in this god forsaken city, he’d throw up every organ he had.

He thought he heard Simpson and Kavanagh arguing in the third floor lab on his way back, but after yesterday’s hunger hallucination, he didn’t dare get near. He wasn’t sure his heart could take it, and that was saying something when he was Rodney McKay, Abandoned Intergalactic Explorer. 

His lab, eerie in its complete silence, weirded him out more than he thought possible. He washed his raw bacon veggie rinds and drank water that tasted metallic from the sink in the back of the lab. His hands shook, and he swore he saw Zelenka over his shoulder in the reflection of his coffee mug.

\-----

The fifth day, Rodney renounced all his genius.

If he were half as smart as he thought he was, he’d have thought of the Jumper bay first before ripping his hands up working on the DHD without the proper supplies. It was a brief moment of insight, though, because Rodney knew before he even got there that the jumpers were all dead.

He tried them all, anyway. Millicent and Helga, Olivia, Renee, Maria Lucia and Doris, Sheppard’s favorite. Rodney thought, not for the first time, that there was something distinctly wrong with the heads of American pilots and their habit of naming their planes after women. Then again, there was something wrong with scientists naming their pets Einstein and Kepler, so he let it go. 

He found John Sheppard’s jacket over the back of the pilot seat in Doris, warm as if he’d just taken it off. Rodney pulled it on, and he was tired, so fucking fried, that he had to sit down in the co-pilot seat just for a second. His hands were bleeding all over the gown he was still wearing, but he didn’t much care until cool digits wrapped around them.

Sheppard’s eyes were so hazel up close. “Some job you’ve done here, McKay. Beckett’s having a damned hissy fit. Christ almighty, what were you going to do, offer up a blood sacrifice to the voodoo gods?”

“If that’s what it took,” he murmured from cracked lips. “You left me.”

Sheppard’s mouth twisted and just for a second, Rodney could almost imagine he looked sad. “I know.”

“You could be helping me, you know.”

“Yeah, how’s that?” Sheppard’s eyes were hazel and his hands were cool, so carefully cleaning away blood. 

“You could be starting the jumper for me like a good soldier boy.”

Sheppard’s lips quirked around the shadows in his eyes. “What, the Amazing McKay can’t do it on his own?”

“Does it _look_ like I can do it on my own?” Rodney demanded, yanking his left hand back. The right felt too good, over whatever Sheppard was doing to it. “Would I be sitting here like an idiot in a dead spaceship if I could get the fucking thing to fly? Everyone knows Atlantis likes you best, so get the damn thing started and let’s _go_.”

Sheppard’s hands gentled on his. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere! I’m stranded alone in a completely abandoned city with nothing to eat but salty alien green beans and no one to talk to but myself and _you_! Do you know how many days a human body can last without food? Three, at most, and I _refuse_ to barbecue a Genii. I’m living on borrowed time here, so get this thing going and let’s _go_.”

Sheppard squeezed Rodney’s hand in his own, so carefully, so tenderly that Rodney wanted to smack him one, and would have if his hands weren’t in ribbons. At least Sheppard sounded amused when he said, “Don’t light the charcoal just yet, Rodney. We’re going to get you out of this. Swear it on the head of Kavanagh.”

“He wouldn’t be much of a loss.”

“Zelenka, then. Hell, the whole science team. Just hang in there.”

“Everyone keeps saying that, but I don’t know if... if I can...”

His eyes rolled back and he thought of nothing.

\----

The sixth day, Rodney daydreamed.

He was so hungry he’d started trembling, and it was all he could do not to dream of all the food he’d given up to come to the Pegasus galaxy. Cookie dough, and stuffed anchovy olives, potato chips and gummi bears. Chicken fried steak, meatball stew, lasagna. _McDonalds_. 

Sheppard’s jacket was warm but the cold had burrowed deep now, all the way inside him. Rodney knew he was going to die drinking metallic water from his chipped coffee mug with his legs curled tightly to his chest, dreaming about chicken McNuggets and vanilla shakes, because if the universe ever held a grudge against anyone, it was Rodney McKay. His fingers, chapped and bleeding with the nails scraped back, lay curled in his arms. They were useless, as useless as the fucking Stargate right in front of him, so dead it didn’t even make the soft, barely audible _click-click-click_ it always did.

“Fuck you, too,” he whispered, and flicked the hunk of useless metal off.

\----

The seventh day, Rodney didn’t bother opening his eyes. 

He slept through the morning, the afternoon, and into the evening. He awoke only long enough to weep bitterly for all he’d never accomplished, all he’d never atoned for, all the chicken McNuggets he’d never eat, and his lost chances for the Nobel Prize. If Zelenka has a shred of decency he’d share Rodney’s notes with Earth one day. Rodney could handle being one of those men who weren’t recognized until after their deaths. There was a sort of poetic justice in it, anyway, and martyrdom always looked good on him no matter what Sheppard thought.

“Even Athosians do not concentrate on dying when there is a chance to live, Rodney.”

Rodney didn’t open his eyes even when he felt the soft glide of Teyla’s hands as they settled over his. “Then thank God I’m not Athosian, because I’m gonna die.”

Ronan’s voice broke in from somewhere to his left, and Rodney cracked an eye open to look at him in all his giant, beastly glory. “Seems to me that you’ve got all of Atlantis at your disposal. Granted, I haven’t been here long, but you’re pretty smart.”

“Pretty smart never got me anywhere but a ticket to certain doom. Go away.”

"Pity you're gonna give up like this," Ronan said, and Rodney knew he’d been wrong when he thought that this guy wasn't all that bad. "Gotta be stronger than this to hold on."

"Go away."

But they didn’t go away, so Rodney did. He thought he heard Carson and Sheppard talking about antidotes and poisons, dreams in the fever’s between, but it was there and gone again just on the edge of his hearing.

\----

The eighth day, Rodney was fairly sure he was dying.

He couldn’t move, or think, or barely breathe, and he was seeing things because he hated Zelenka but Zelenka was right there, looking down at him. 

“Whatever you’ve got to say, make it good, and let me die in peace.”

Zelenka’s eyes crinkled at the corners and he slid down into Indian style sitting so gracefully that Rodney was jealous, just a little. Rodney didn’t think he’d ever be that graceful, but as he was dying, it didn’t much matter. “Dying? From what I see you are still alive, if all the bare skin is anything to go by.”

Rodney looked down, noted the infirmary gown, and said, “I’m starting a new fashion trend.”

“I am not so sure Sheppard will ever forgive you. Not all of us have such shapely legs.” He peered at Rodney thoughtfully. “I believe you are a failure, and acting a coward at that.”

Rodney glared at him. “You’re supposed to be a figment of my imagination. Aren’t figments supposed to be nicer than this?”

Radek snorted, quite rudely. “You are not a nice man.”

“No, I’m a brilliant man.”

“ _No_ , you are arrogant, conceited, selfish, egotistical, _rude_ man. You make little girls cry.”

“Are we coming to the point anytime soon?”

Radek’s lips curved, his flyaway hair hanging over his forehead and accentuating his receding hairline all the worse. “You are all those things, my friend, but you are no coward. I find you here, in middle of wreckage of control room, with no solution! You are licking your wounds instead of looking for answer!”

“I _have_ looked,” Rodney snapped, and the hunger hurt like a clenching fist around his insides. “I’ve looked, I’ve done everything I can think of. There’s nothing left to do.”

And then Radek gave him the most disappointed look he’d ever given him, so much worse than when Rodney came back from blowing up half a solar system, that it made his already clenching guts twist and he wanted to die just from the way those dark brown eyes looked.

For a minute, he thought maybe he had.

\-----

The ninth day, Rodney drove himself to his knees, dry heaving, and hated the world with all the fiery passion of a thousand suns, which was actually why he was driving himself to his knees in the first place.

Barely awake, barely moving at this point in his slow, agonizing death, Rodney levered his aching body up. He didn’t want someone to find his rotten skeleton wearing nothing but a modesty-free hospital gown and bomber jacket two hundred years from now and think that the last people to inhabit Atlantis were a bunch of homosexual playboys with atrocious fashion sense. 

“You could at least petition for a windbreaker model, Carson.”

Beckett gazed down at him from his side, his fingers gentle on Rodney’s arm where he was taking Rodney’s pulse, the other around the stethoscope he was adjusting around his ears. His eyes, sad and tense, matched the pinch of his slightly curved mouth. “That was a terrible joke, Rodney.”

“What can I say, near death experiences turn me into a comedian. I’ll be playing for another hour, margaritas on me.”

“An hour, eh? What makes you say that?”

“An hour is all it’ll take. I’ve got an idea.”

His hands were bloody and broken and agonized and they barely worked, and Carson clucked like a mother hen around him, and Zelenka smiled at him, and behind them both Sheppard looked smug and happy. All of Sheppard’s faith and trust were in his eyes, pointed at Rodney. It was more than he could have ever hoped for after blowing up three-fifths of a solar system.

By the time Rodney blinks twice the solar panels on Atlantis’ outer walls have been turned up to the sky. 

One by one, the consoles come alive around him, Atlantis herself sings in the sunshine, and she opens a wormhole to the last active address for him, without his even having to re-dial.

He had a smile on his face when he strolled through.

\-----

When Rodney woke up on the tenth day, there was no bedside vigil. 

He hated the infirmary, not just because of the heart monitors and the antiseptic smell, and not because he’d watched his mother get eaten alive by cancer in a hospital bed when he was fifteen. He hated the infirmary because he woke up alone again, and he thought maybe he was going to have to break out the lighter fluid and make himself a big Genii party if he had to endure anymore hunger. 

Zelenka peered at him much too closely, his fly-away hair tickling Rodney’s nose.

“Rodney, you have more luck than devil himself,” he whispered, almost in awe.

Rodney glared sharply at him, and the look that unfolded across Radek’s face could be termed nothing less than ecstatic, as if he’d found four ZedPM’s and a partirdge in a pear tree. He yelled for Carson in indecipherable czech so loudly that Rodney’s ears rang.

Faces, and voices, and Carson’s thick brogue demanding they move the bloody hell outa’ his way proved to be too much. Rodney closed his eyes and let himself slip away.

\-----

When Rodney woke up on the tenth night at the touch on his arm, Sheppard was right there, asleep on the bed beside Rodney’s own, with Teyla meditating at his feet and Ronan brooding behind her. Zelenka snored loudly from the chair pulled up to Rodney’s bed side, looking every inch the type who would name his cat Einstein, right next to Elizabeth who was as rumpled as he’d ever seen her.

Inexplicably, Rodney felt a tug on his grinchy heart.

“Hello, there.”

Carson smiled down at Rodney, his lips still pinched with worry but his eyes were warm and full of affection. He had a tray beside him filled with needles and medications and bird bones and mojos, all of which would eventually be used on Rodney, no doubt. Rodney couldn’t find it in himself to really make too much of a fuss when he wasn’t alone anymore and better yet – he wasn’t starving.

“How are you feeling?” Carson asked, and did something at his arm that made the tugging pain ease. 

“Like I’m going to sue you for malpractice,” he whispered, and Carson chuckled deeply. “What happened?”

“Poison, Rodney. We’ve been looking for a cure for days, couldn’t even risk a feeding tube until we found out what it was. Don’t you remember?” Rodney glared at him and Carson apparently found that amusing, though his smile had a relieved edge to it. “Rodney, you and your team went on a mission to P84-449 ten days ago. The native people were less than friendly, and that was before you opened that famous mouth of yours.” His eyes crinkled, and his fingers squeezed Rodney’s arm. “Ye’ve been hallucinating for several days now, worked yourself into a right panic a few times; you cut the bloody hell out of your hands when you tried to take apart one of the monitors before we could catch you. Spoke to yourself.” Something about the way he said that made Rodney’s eyes snap to his, and the dull blush of embarrassment hit his cheeks when Carson looked at him with something akin to tenderness. “You’re all right, now, not to worry. The worst has passed.”

Rodney looked past Carson to the people around him to see Carson’s smile reflected on all the ones around him but for Ronan, because Ronan didn’t do the smiling thing, and Elizabeth, because she was lightly snoring. “They’ve been here all this time. Even Dr. Weir, though she’s been at her wit's end trying to negotiate a peace treaty for the antidote. We’ve been quite worried for you, laddie.” He squeezed again. “And now you deserve a wee nap. Ye've earned it.”

Rodney wanted to complain, wanted to ask when he’d get out of here, when he’d get back to his life and when he could eat something other than the stuff they were pushing through the tube in his nose, but for the moment he thought maybe he could let himself rest, if only for Carson’s peace of mind.

He turned his head just enough to let his eyes linger on Sheppard, Teyla and Ronan, Radek and Elizabeth. His voice was a trace of its former self, nasal with the tube in his throat, so he poured as much indignation as he could into it. "Get back to work, all of you. We could have found a ZedPM while all of you were playing Florence Nightingale. And don't make any messes I have to clean up, because my genius is better reserved for my newest project. I’ll thank you to bring my laptop tomorrow morning, Zelenka.”

There was a relieved sigh that went around. Rodney could almost feel the exhalation of it through the warm, amused glares that hit him from all sides. "Anyone wondering why we were worried?" John asked, voice fading out as Carson shooed everyone out of the room. 

Bedside vigils were annoying as hell, all those people staring and expecting him to be witty. Rodney was not a witty sort of man, he was a _genius_ sort of man, whose brains were much better suited to solving dilemma’s that plagued humanity and winning a Nobel Prize.

And if he thought maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all to have such good people worried about him, he didn’t speak it aloud, even if Carson’s eyes were gentle on his own when he clasped Rodney’s hand in his.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Ten Days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5221154) by [amazuppai (catalysticskies)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalysticskies/pseuds/amazuppai)




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